It’s all happening in-app now! App ad revenue up across APAC markets

In-app advertising has now jumped ahead of mobile web across the Asia Pacific (APAC) market. That’s according to the Mobile First Insights APAC Q1 2016 report from Opera Mediaworks.

Click-through rates (CTR) on apps were found to be 1.3 to 2 times higher than mobile web CTRs across countries in the region, including Australia, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

App ad revenue surpassed mobile web across most APAC markets by up to 13 times in Singapore and Thailand. In India and Indonesia, revenue is still higher from mobile web.

“It’s fascinating to see that some trends, such as high usage of gaming, are reflected across almost all Asia Pacific markets, despite the range of cultural, social and economic factors that vary between countries in our region. We hope this new report will serve the needs of brands, agencies and publishers alike, and that it will be something that they look forward to every quarter because of the invaluable insights and category best practices that can be applied to their business.”

The report also highlights that mobile users are now spending 46 minutes a day on popular apps. Their favourite categories are games and entertainment apps. The global average time spent is 30 minutes. Average app session lengths in the region are 9.6 minutes compared to a global average of 8.5 minutes.

For the majority of APAC countries, game apps generate the highest number of ad impressions served on Opera Mediaworks’ mobile ad platform. However, in India app usage focuses more heavily on music, video and media categories, whilst Indonesia’s tech-savvy youth are driving technology and computing apps.

However, sports and health apps do enjoy much greater conversion rates and CTRs than game apps, despite the latter’s popularity.

Gulati adds that advertisers who used a mobile ad platform also generally found their ads to be targeted more efficiently, as opposed to those using a media company.

Purpose-built creative mobile campaigns, using 360 degree video on mobile or haptic effects are fast seeing good engagement rates. Mobile advertisers who want their campaigns to be successful will need to tap into new technologies to entice audiences.